I feel like this

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I've been down in the basement, greasing up the gears and tightening the screws on Octopus #11. It should be up this week. And Eric Baus' new book, Tuned Droves (Octopus Books), should be in a box on the doorstep by next weekend, just in time for the AWP conference. Making new t-shirts. Making new buttons. I have an eye appointment tomorrow. I've been hearing people say "homeless person" lately and I've been uncomfortable with it somehow and I couldn't figure out why until last night when I heard some one say it at the William Stafford birthday celebration in an anecdote about how Stafford would talk, for a long time, to homeless people and it occured to me that it was because they were emphasizing the word "homeless": homeless people, they would say, which made me realize from now on I think I'll say homeless people. Try it out loud. Do it. I read a poem there called Growing Up. It goes like this:

One of my wings beat faster,
I couldn't help it--
the one away from the light.

It hurt to be told all the time
how I loved that terrible flame.

--WS, 1977

I was up there for about 45 seconds. That is the perfect amount of time one should be up in front of readers at a reading, I decided. I think all my poetry readings from now on will last about 45 seconds. But, sometimes, I'll still try to read about 10-12 poems. I'll just read them really fast. I need a new pair of shoes.